


Five Sins You Never Meant

by kangeiko



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-13
Updated: 2007-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus finds out about John/Susan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Sins You Never Meant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leyenn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/gifts).



You're reasonably certain that jealousy is one of those emotions you're supposed to have given up. Mastered, rather; your teachers had been quite specific on the futility of the elimination of even the basest of feelings. It had been strange back then, sitting lotus-style and listening to Master Theronn discourse on lust and envy and jealousy and all those other inappropriate feelings, hot and wet and angry in your belly.

The Minbari have a word for 'covet' that covers a multitude of sins. It's a darker, thicker word in Andronato, coarse on the tongue, and one of their oldest. By a peculiarity of language - chance or design, it did not seem appropriate to ask - it has only one grammatical case, not terribly easy to translate into Standard. The nearest you have managed is, _you covet_. Only it means a lot more than that, of course.

The first stratum is the jealousy aspect. _You covet another man's wife._ The Old testament booms across the training room, god's judgement in an alien tongue. You want what rightfully belongs to another. Don't deny this; you do. You want her to touch _you_, to look at _you_ like that, with perfect trust. You want from her what is freely offered to you by others, but is rejected out of hand. Because they are not _her_. Isn't love grand?

The second stratum is resentment. You feel him unworthy of her. Let's add to that disloyalty, and bearing false witness, shall we? _We live for the One, we die for the One_ is one among many oaths you have sworn, and if you do not believe him worthy of that, what are you doing here?

_How can you give up your life for another if you feel a greater claim to life than they?_ Master Theronn made everyone meditate at length on this. He did not use the example of The One - great and bright and shining - but of a beggar, poor and diseased. Surely, he said, you could give more to the universe if _you_ were to survive. Surely your skills and training _need_ to be preserved. Surely _you_ need to live, more than the wretched, helpless _they_.

And if you cannot give up your life for another, alone and unsung in the dark - if you judge another unworthy because you feel _your_ claim on love should be honoured, not theirs -

Tell me, Anla'Shok, what are you doing here?

The third stratum is more insidious still. The thing that you covet has no choice; no will of its own. There is no word for it in the old rules, but it is there on each one, in each religion's call to compassion. _Cast not to stone those dear to your heart,_ the Andronato version goes, more or less. You like to think yourself enlightened - thoughtful on occasion, even - and would be mortified, surely, if accused of objectifying those around you. But how else to explain it, this sour taste in your mouth, dry and rasping as if your own body rebels against you. _Cast not to stone_ \- lest you be cast in turn, and moved like pawns across a chessboard. (And where the pieces fall, who shall know?)

The fourth stratum is the hurt pride you are currently nursing. It will pass.

The fifth stratum is maybe the worst. It's what springs first to mind and mouth, after all, when you see them together. Oh, and they _are_ together, there is no denying it. Maybe it won't last - you've heard rumours of a prophecy, true enough - but that's not terribly important right now, is it? Right now, his hand is on her waist, holding her gently as he kisses her. Right now, she's reaching up to stroke his cheek, his neck, his hair, and follow her touch with her lips, mapping him as if in darkness.

Right now, you need to realise that neither one of them realises that this room is used as a meeting point, and so is monitored. Right now, you need to turn off the screen, and _stop, stop now._

Right now, your heart is not the issue at all.

*

fin


End file.
